which it is composed.

We now come to Tennyson's masterpiece, the "Idylls of the King," an epic
of chivalry, interpreted as personifying in its various characters the
soul at war with the senses. These appeared during the years 1859 and
1872. Each of the Idylls, which has a connecting thread binding it to
its fellow-allegory, takes its plot or fable from the legendary lore
that has clustered round the name of Arthur, mythical King of the
Britons about the era of the first invasion by the English. Out of the
mass of material which was gathered by Sir Thomas Malory for his prose
history of Arthur and his Knights, Tennyson takes the chief incidents
and noblest heroic traits of character in the legends and blends them in
a fashion of his own, steeping them in an atmosphere which his
imagination creates, and lighting up all with a passion and glory of
knightly adventure, as well as with a chasteness, purity, and high
fervor of ethical thought, that must perpetuate the romance, as he has
given it us, unto all time. The sections of the work as it now stands,
in addition to its introductory dedication to the late Prince Consort,
and the closing poem to the late Queen Victoria, are as follows: 'The
Coming of Arthur,' which relates the mystery of the birth of the King,
his marriage to Guinevere, daughter of Leodogran, King of Cameliard, and
the wonders attending his crowning and establishment on the throne; next
comes 'Gareth and Lynette,' a tale of love and scorn, and of the
conflict between a false pride and a true ambition; to this is appended
'The Marriage of Geraint,' of Arthur's court, and a member of the great
order of the Round Table. Next follows 'Geraint and Enid,'--Enid, the
gentle and timid, whom Geraint had married after wooing the haughty
Lynette,--a tale of pure and loyal womanhood, darkened for awhile by the
clouds of jealousy and suspicion, yet closing happily long after the
"spiteful whispers" had died down, and Geraint, assured of Enid's
fealty, had ruled his kingdom well and gone forth to "crown a happy life
with a fair death" against the heathen of the Northern Sea, "fighting
for the blameless King." The next Idyll relates how the venerable
magician Merlin succumbs to the thrall of the wily harlot Vivien, decked
in her rare robe of samite, and yields to her the charm which was his
secret. 'Lancelot and Elaine' follows with its conflict between the
virgin innocence of Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat, and the g